Jody Egginton downplays Franz Tost’s ‘I don’t trust’ AlphaTauri engineers comment

AlphaTauri technical director Jody Egginton insists the Faenza-based team remains “united” even after team boss Franz Tost’s scathing criticism of his technical department.

Speaking after the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix, a race in which AlphaTauri showed no signs of bouncing back from last year’s disappointing P9 in the standings, Tost took aim at his team’s engineers.

“The engineers tell me we make some good progress but I don’t trust them anymore,” he told the media, “I just want to see the lap time because this is the only thing that counts.

“Because during the winter months they [the engineers] told me, ‘the car is fantastic, [we] made big progress’ then we came to Bahrain and we are nowhere.”

Egginton has downplayed his boss’s harsh criticism.

“Franz has known the engineering team for a long time,” he said as per motorsport-total.com. “It’s the same team whose cars made it onto the podium in 2019, 2020 and 2021.

“Franz issued a statement that was probably taken a bit out of context and doesn’t show the exact picture.

“We work as a team, sit down with Franz, discuss things and just keep going.

“It is what it is,” he added. “Franz gave a few interviews and said a few things, but we’re going to keep going. That doesn’t change anything, everyone is still united in what we have to do.

“Ultimately Franz’s disappointment as team principal is that the car isn’t well established enough in midfield to be where we want to be. And he’s expressed that in a way.”

PlanetF1.com recommends

Trouble for AlphaTauri? No ‘game-changer’ upgrade in the works

The F1 ‘fighter’ who should not be written off after just three races

Yuki Tsunoda’s drastic suggestion to counter AlphaTauri’s ‘horrible’ top speed

The 49-year-old is confident AlphaTauri can achieve the goals the team set out, adamant they hadn’t made their benchmark too low.

“They were real goals, good goals,” says Egginton. “We haven’t quite reached some of them yet, but we will.

“There are no worries that our goals are far from what we need to do to be competitive. We just haven’t achieved some yet.”

The team did take a step forward at the Australian Grand Prix where they run an upgraded package that included a new floor for the AT04.

Yuki Tsunoda scored that Sunday to get the team off the mark and away from P10.

“The reality is that in the first half of the season we have to try to overtake some teams to get into midfield,” Egginton said. “That’s why we came to Melbourne with the floor and most other teams came with less.

“So our strategy is to keep improving the car. And hopefully early in the season we develop better than some of our rivals and catch them. If we don’t develop then we won’t catch them.

“So our strategy is very clear, that we are trying to reduce the gap.”

He reckons the next round of upgrades will again see the team moving forward. “And the updates for the next races will do that again,” he added. “”It’s not uncommon to miss targets, it happens and nobody likes it. But we didn’t miss them on purpose, it’s just the way it is.”